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Category Archives: Sci-Fi Gaming

Awhile ago, last year, and inspired by some terrain that Dakka user “Nerdfest” had built, I decided to dig out a bunch of my Mantic BattleZone sprues from their various Kickstarters that had been sitting untouched in storage tubs for years at this point, and make something. So over a rather enjoyable winter afternoon, I put together this bunker-thing. Being winter, there was little point even thinking about spraying it, so I let it sit, though the bare, grey plastic version did get used for a few 40k games.

Once summer rolled around, I gave it a spray. Dark Metallic Charcoal for the outside, and a sort-of undercoat of white for the interior. Now, I’m not sure where to go next with this thing. Broadly speaking, I can see three main options:

Drybrush it various shades of metallic, for a rather generic finish.

Paint it in military/generic “boring” tones that fit into quite a few different games. Military greens, or the more generic Greys or Tans. With or without things like signage or stancilled numbers and letters and so on and so forth.

Paint it in “industrial/hive world” tones. Like the blue-grey from much of the original Necromunda card terrain. Or shades of green, or rusty reds, or…? Kinda like the above, but with more “pop” and of course, things like heavy rust and hazard stripes.

Even within those, there’s plenty of choice, though. So again: Analysis paralysis. Whatever the final verdict, I’ll probably put together a smaller building (4 squares) to go alongside this one and paint it in much the same scheme.

Warning, Pic HEAVY! – Also, most pics can be clicked for larger versions.

Here’s the last of the first batch of my gaming mat reviews of Urbanmatz‘ products from the Czech Republic. The Dirty Roads 6’x4′.

I’ve got a bunch of Deep Cut Studios and Gamemat.eu products that I’ve also purchased that I will be photographing and writing reviews for shortly as well. But today we’re looking at the Dirty Roads.

Often when I buy something from a company, there’s a “key” item that acts as an anchor for other stuff you then add-on. In the case of my Urbanmatz order, it was this mat. After seeing several photographs of it online, I was sold. The overall colours and theme matches my bases once again, as the Urbanmatz Badlands mat did.

As with the other mats I’ve gotten from Urbanmatz, the design is printed onto neoprene (mouse pad material) and is once again quite nice. This time, the game I’m using to showcase the mat is an Age of Sigmar clash between Dwarves and Ogres, set in an unnamed Old World city (because I can use the ruleset without the background!) We were trying out the rules, so it’s an actual game rather than a mockup.

We made a bunch of mistakes, mostly due to not quite understanding all of the nuances and not reading warscrolls properly. I’ll put a lot of that down to the rules. Well, not the actual rules, but man-idiot Kirby’s insistence to the designers that everything fit on four pages in total. I’m all for streamlined rulesets, but 4 pages is a bit much (or not enough!) I’m looking forward to trying out 40k 8th with 12 pages of core rules.

One thing that can’t be argued is that we had a good looking game of toy soldiers. While I consider the quality of my models and terrain to be pretty solid, quite honestly the mat really does add to it. And no, I’m not paid to say this and didn’t get a discount – if I were offered one I’d certainly accept it – as I accepted the stained Snow Territory 6’x4′ mat, but I’d also state it upfront in my reviews, as I did there.

I didn’t set up a full 40k mock battle, nor any historical skirmish games because it literally takes hours to get out all of the stuff, set it up, photograph it and take it away for photos, but the actual AoS game being played on it shows it’s versatilty pretty well, along with those scale shots. I think this mat works very well for a variety of genres and a variety of scales. I could easily use this mat for 40k and it’s derivatives, Fantasy Battles/9th Age/Kings of War with fewer buildings, Age of Sigmar and other more densely built up fantasy skirmish like Mordheim and Frostgrave (if you play outside of the snow!) or Malifaux (in a sectioned-off area, or the smaller versions). It also works across period and scale quite nicely, as demonstrated by the below set of photos, so 20mm games such as Flames of War/Team Yankee/Crossfire will work as well as Bolt Action or SAGA with Romans or SAGA with Crusaders.

Based on its similarity with the “Badlands” design and colouration for the non-road sections, I’ve also found that it works both with “forest” and “jungle” foliage when I was playing around with my scenery, so once again that’s a positive.

Once again, the mat came in it’s own, labelled bag at no additional cost, which is good. Until this one, I really liked these bags. Unfortunately, the zipper turned out to be faulty on me as I was putting the mat away after reviewing it. I’ve got it back in awkwardly by not drawing the zip to the end, which is awkward. Since this was only the third or forth time I’d had the thing out of its bag, I found this really disappointing. I’ll let them know about it, and update with their response.

Verdict: I’ve said this before, but this mat is very much what I wanted it to be. As I’ve mentioned, it was the “key” design that motivated me to buy this batch of mats from Urbanmatz, and I’m very happy with the final product, as I was with their service. I’m considering buying another batch of mats in the near future (another 4 or so). I figure that while I’ll have spent a fair bit on game mats in 2017, I’ll then be set for the rest of my life, assuming that the neoprene lasts!

Warning, Pic HEAVY! – Also, most pics can be clicked for larger versions.

Here’s the next of my gaming mat reviews. Once again, this one is from Urbanmatz, based in the Czech Republic. The Badlands Game Mat. I chose this one as I’d been wanting something to (approximately) match the style that the majority of my models are based with. That is: dark earth, patchy grass and the occasional bit of rock.

While the mat may look a little glare-y in some photos, and perhaps a bit washed out – it’s my lighting and photography to blame there. In person, it looks really nice.

Having said that, this is probably the time to emphasise again that despite them sending me a (stained) snow mat gratis, this isn’t any kind of paid for review, I paid full price (plus shipping to Australia!) for this mat and just as when I’ve reviewed and links to places like Red Box, Maxmini, Kromlech, Scotia Grendel, Brigade, RPE, Reaper, Games Workshop or anyone else, I don’t get any kickbacks from the links inside this review to pimp their wares, nor to I carry on and on about how wonderful (X company)’s products are every post. Unlike some others out there. 😉

I also took a few 40k-themed photos as well. We set up a small imperial supply outpost out in the boonies somewhere, where the Imperial Guard present are assaulted by (who else?) the Iron Warriors.

I didn’t set up any fantasy or historical skirmish games for photos, but I think you can pretty well judge for yourself at this stage. It’s going to work well for a lot of genres and games from dinosaurs, through ancients, all flavbours of historicals and moderns through to sci-fi. It’s a nice, generic rural “out int he bush somewhere” pattern that works well with the three elements that I use in most of my models’ basing. I also found that it works both with “forest” and “jungle” foliage when I was playing around with my scenery, so that’s a bonus in my book.

Once again, the mat came in it’s own, labelled bag at no additional cost. I really like these bags, and it would be great if Urbanmatz would consider selling them separately as well. I need to get one for my FFG X-Wing mat so I don’t need to store it in the box anymore, one for my GW “green grass” mat, one for my ancient Armourcast (I think) mat, and then a few (or one) to bundle my smallish Mantic ones into. I know of another vendor who does sell them, so I might have to sort it out that way later on.

Verdict: This mat is pretty much what I wanted it to be. I can’t say that I’m surprised, but if it wasn’t a good one, I’d be pretty disappointed and would not be shy about sharing that. It’s a good mat, the quality is there, and the design is one that I’m happy with. If you like the design, I can’t complain about the quality of the mat or the service I got from Urbanmatz, so I really don’t have any hesitation in recommending them.

I’ve got one more of these things to review now – Dirty Roads. We’ve actually got an AoS game set up out in the shed ready to go, so I’ll try and get some in-progress shots to include in the next review.

Recently I completed and showed off the barricades from the Sedition Wars Kickstarter’s Terrain Set. Today I have some more scatter terrain to share – specifically the crates.

Not my work, but the work that inspired these getting painted after all this time. Clicky the pic to go to Agis’ site for lots more Imperial Assault goodness.

Once again, I’ll show the pic and link to the post that inspired me to dig them out and get them done – from Agis Neugebauer’s blog. I liked the weathering that he put into the crates, and also liked the contrast created via the red straps. He did use transfers to define them with Imperial cogs, and once again I decided to skip any markings that would tie them to any one universe, so they can be used in anything from “movie-style” Bolt Action WWII (when we don’t go to great pains to ensure historical accuracy of the design of all the crates left around that are being used as cover, through moderns, Star Wars (we can see how well they work above), near-future, post-apocalyptic right through to the 41st Millennium, where mundane things still often look strangely familiar…

The proud warriors of the Minotaurs Chapter provide scale reference alongside members of the Terror Australis Regiment of the A̶s̶t̶r̶a̶ ̶M̶i̶l̶i̶t̶a̶r̶u̶m̶ Imperial Guard

As can be seen, I gave them a light weathering, though not to the level of detail or care that Agis did on his. As far as scatter terrain goes, they’re really just more of the same sort of stuff I usually churn out at the level I’m happy to go with, generally. Not superbly exciting by any means, but additional, solid looking stuff that looks better than simply a spray and wash, a bit of extra weathering, though not nearly to the effort put in by people like D&B in his diorama-level pieces. Oh, I also found and finished one more of those U.S. DUST Tactics Supply Drop Crates, so it gets a guest appearance in this photo.

Remember Sedition Wars and it’s incredibly-successful Kickstarter? Of course you don’t. That’s because you either never heard of it, or the complete abortion of a game and fulfilment means you’ve blocked it from your memory like a terrible life experience, which it very much was. I was one of the ones taken in by a love and respect of Mike McVey going back decades to my youth and being foolish enough to believe the h̶y̶p̶e̶ lies of the campaign put on by Studio McVey and CMON to the tune of quite a few hundred dollars for my multiple pledges. Anyway, this post isn’t to bitch about the pile of money I flushed down the toilet in a mess of warped boards, terrible unplaytested rules and nicely sculpted but terribly cast restic models.

It’s about the one bright spot of the entire project (aside from the textured bases, I guess). The Terrain Set. More specifically, for this post, the barricades. I’ve been buying a bit of stuff for FFG’s various Star Wars games in the past 6 months or so, and part of that has naturally involved looking at pictures of stuff.

Not my work, but the work that inspired these getting painted after all this time. Clicky the pic to go to Agis’ site for lots more Imperial Assault goodness.

While doing so, I came across some pics on Agis Neugebauer’s blog. Now, he’s a poster over on Dakka, and I’m somewhat familiar with his work posted there, but I hadn’t seen his Star Wars Imperial Assault stuff before. Lots of great stuff there, including an Oskara conversion that I will totally be ripping off, but Agis’ also has a bunch of the Sedition Wars stuff painted up, and looking pretty bloody sweet. This triggered the “Hey, I’ve got those somewhere!” reaction, and off I went to find the crates, and while doing so, also grabbed out the barricades.

The barricades got finished first. Sprayed a custom green based on Vallejo’s 890 Reflective Green, then oversprayed with Plastic Soldier Company’s German Field Grey (Don’t buy their spray cans – they leak!). I then added the Lambdas, taken from a Warlord Games decal sheet (I would have preferred some white outline tank numbers from the WLG German Turret sheet, but I didn’t have any, and Lambdas are totally a thing in modern military markings and so in my mind help these pieces fit anything from near-future to 40k. I then drybrushed the barricades with Army Painter’s Army Green, and then Vallejo Bonewhite on the extremes. Some foam-weathering with Vallejo Metal Black, Vallejo Plate Mail Metal coloured primer and Vallejo Scorched Brown. Followed up with a spray of Plastic Soldier Company’s Dirt Brown Weathering Spray (they leak, FFS!), wiped down with a damp cloth, and finally a quick go-over with some of the foam-weathering, and they were ready for a heavy spray of gloss polyurethane varnish for protection, and then the good old Testor’s Dullcote to make them look good.

I also wanted to avoid any overtly-distinguishing iconography that would tie them too closely to any particular universe. So this meant no Imperial Aquilas or Imperial Cogs, and the dirty weathered look fits pretty well with just about anything, except maybe an especially-shiny game of Infinity. I can’t see pre-fab barriers getting carefully cleaned before being loaded into a transport between deployments, after all.

I have 12 barricades in total and I think they came up very nicely, but I’m also quite aware that looking at the individual weathering patterns on each of them isn’t exactly enthralling blog content, so here are some more posed shots with a few of my Imperial Guardsmen from the Terror Australis Regiment providing scale. Also, a sneak preview of my next mat review…

Warning, Pic HEAVY! – Also, most pics can be clicked for larger versions.

Recently, at the end of 2016 I placed an order for three gaming mats from Urbanmatz, based in the Czech Republic. There was a delay on one of the mats I ordered, as it was out of stock for a few weeks, though Martin was kind enough to offer me a freebie Snow Territory mat, which he explained had some yellowed stain marks on it. I gladly accepted the offer, and am reviewing the mat now, with the noted discolouration noted and allowed for. I recently reviewed their 6’x3′ Space Mat along with the Fantasy Flight 3’x’3′ X-Wing Starfield Mat.

Once again, the Urbanmatz mat is on neoprene (mouse pad material) and is quite nice. I wasn’t sure what to expect when it was offered, and while I was secretly hoping for a 6×4, was expecting a 4×4, not wanting to get my hopes up – but it turned out that it was a full-sized 6×4 mat.

——

Now I don’t have any models at all based for a snow environment, and even my thoughts around (eventually) playing Frostgrave involved basically ignoring the cold-weather setting but my initial thoughts when it was offered was actually to use it as a second mat for X-Wing, especially given the precedent from the recent films for atmospheric fighter battles.

Unlike some other Snow/Arctic mats I’ve browsed recently, the details in the Urbanmatz offering are quite subtle and non-specific, even being pretty scale-agnostic. Just offering a hint of something buried below the snow, but subtle enough that the mat could also be used as a cloudscape if that was something needed for a game. I’d take some comparison pictures showing the textures with 15mm armour followed by 28mm infantry if I had anything painted appropriately.

I did spend the better part of an afternoon with Marouda setting up and laying out figures to see how it all would look. First up were a couple of flights of X-Wing ships.

I honestly think it looks a treat for X-Wing and gives a nice unique look to the (pretend) battle – and should do so when we actually do play X-Wing on it.

Here’s a close-up of some of the discolouration on the mat. I was expecting it to be far worse, potentially in large yellow piss-patches in the middle of the mat but the issues are limited to a few places around the edge. While I can fully understand why Urbanmatz are unable to sell these, they’re minor enough for me to be able to ignore, especially given that the mat was a freebie.

Time for some 28mm models, then. As mentioned before, I lack enough proper painted WW2 to really do much, and I’m completely lacking in snow-themed terrain, so I laid down some old, old Armorcast ruined building corners and my platoon of painted Warlord T-34/85 tanks. The tanks looked alright, though obviously whitewashed would have fit in more effectively.

The buildings, left unbased as they are is usually a positive on darker surfaces as it allows for much more modularity, but on the Snowy Terrain mat they do kinda stand out too starkly. Clearly, if I want to do much with this mat, I should sort out some snow-covered hills and perhaps a few copses of snow-tipped trees. Frozen lake? Snow-covered cabin? Grimdork from Dakka did a whole little snow-themed table recently, and I do have a jar of Jo Sonja’s texture paste around here somewhere…

The buildings could probably work reasonably well on the Snowy mat if I were to make some squares of “internal damaged building” to lay in the middle of them. Or maybe even some squares of appropriate-looking linoleoum cut with slightly uneven edges?

Next up was to lay some more dense scenery onto the mat and see how it looked. First up we went for a kind of Fantasy layout, a pretend-game of Sorta-Frostgrave, to see how it all looks. More specifically to see how my existing terrain worked with the Snow Territory Mat.

And… it actually looked decent. To me at least. The dark, scorched brown looking bases on both the models and some of the terrain obviously contrast quite starkly with the Snow Territory mat, but it kinda works for me. Obviously snow on bases would make everything tie in much more effectively, but it’s far from awful.

I hadn’t expected it to work this well, but I found it quite reasonable. Far from perfect, but very workable.

Next up I added my Conan Wolves into the fray. Frostgrave has random encounters. Probably not 10 wolves at a time, but whatevs. This is for photos.

So yeah. Not too bad at all. Next up was to swap some of the fantasy terrain out and do the same with some 40k models and terrain.

Yeah, that’s a lot of 40k photos. Basically, I took a ton photos and used a small proportion of them above. I guess the point of them all is to give a good “feel” of how the mat works in a smallish 40k game with a pile of scatter terrain on it. I wasn’t hopeful when it came to using it for 40k, but as with the “Frostgrave” game above, I’m pleasantly surprised with how well it works.

I thought I’d see how the wolves I painted recently look on the mat without vikings and scenery in the way as well, especially given their snow-grey coats. The answer: pretty decent.

As does their larger cousin in (sorta) 28mm scale from the Hasbro/WotC Star Wars Miniatures game.

Leading to potential use next time we go to a snow planet in the Star Wars Edge of the Empire RPG (The PC’s minis are on the far right).

I evidently only have 6 Snowtroopers. How embarassing! I also couldn’t find my AT-STs.

Bringing us full circle with some air combat, I got out some Axis & Allies Angels 20 planes to see how it looked.

Once again, I feel that it looks fine – Great even for air combat battles. I got out some Soviet and Luftwaffe planes for these pics, but it would work just as well for Western Europe 1945 or any other era’s dogfights above the snow. I had a feeling that it’d look good after seeing the X-Wing ships on it, but I wanted to put the WW2 fighters on it and see for myself.

Once again, the bag shots. The 6×4 bag comes with a carry bag that’s noticeably larger than the 6×3 (above in the shot).

Verdict: I’m very pleasantly surprised with the snow mat. I have to admit, it’s not something I’d have ever really considered purchasing, and getting it for free is the only reason I own it. Having it in hand and having had a significant play around with my models on it along with the camera, I can really appreciate it now – especially given the versatility that I managed to work out of it. It’s perhaps not the very best design out there if you only want to play Frostgrave, but I personally really appreciate the fact that it’s very scale-agnostic and works for games and scales from X-Wing to WW2 Dogfights to the more typical 40k/Frostgrave/etc. Clearly it’d work just as well for SAGA, WHFB, Kings of War, Bolt Action, Flames of War and pretty much anything in pretty much any scale needing a winter snow theme, given some complimentary scenery (which I mostly lack).

And to reiterate – while I received this mat for free, there was no request for, no offer nor any implication of Quid Pro Quo in exchange for it. It was kindly offered (I’d guess because I’d already bought 3 and 2 of them were OOS) and gladly accepted, without knowing the size or condition it would be in, given that they were upfront that it was marked. All of the photos were taken over a couple of sessions as I worked out how best I could make use of it myself, and all of the review text are my honest thoughts, feelings and reflections on the mat.

Recently I found and painted up a bunch of “Nightmares” from the long-OOP game Legions of Steel that I’d had stored in various boxes of random figures since the 1990’s. Clearly these models were inspired by James Cameron’s Terminator films, and given that I recently purchased some Terminator Genisys starter sets from Warlord Games when they were on deep Black Friday discount (because rofl@£70.00), I figured I should paint up some of the actual figures. The Resistance figures don’t excite me all that much, so I’ll likely not start on those until all of the Machines are done.

Right-handed T-800 Endoskeletons…

I set some of the Endos aside to work out weapon swaps a bit later, and just decided to knock out a set worth as stock figures. If need be, I can run Imperial Guardsmen, etc as Resistance if I want to learn and play the game in the meantime, but let’s be realistic, that’s not happening anytime soon.

Left-handed T-800 Endoskeletons…

I painted these using the same methods as the Nightmares so they share the same palette and will fit in nicely alongside one another. As originally considered, the Nightmares can act as T-600s/Prototype Endos in the Terminator game, and the T-800 Endoskeletons can join the Nightmares as Iron Warriors cultists as needed – more abominations courtesy of the Dark Mechanicum. I also added a few skulls to some of their bases because Terminator.

“Crawler” T-800 Endoskeletons.

I also knocked out 5 “crawlers” using the same methods. Not sure what they’ll be used for outside of the Terminator Genisys game, but hey, they were easy to paint and they add another 5 models to my completed numbers for the YTD.

Legions of Steel Nightmares provide T-600/Prototype support to their T-800 Endoskeleton brethren.

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Photobucket Image Apocalypse:

Just a quick note to let visitors to my blog know that I am working my way backwards through the blog, repairing the image links that Photobucket cut off in their attempt to self-immolate their business. It’ll take some time, but it’ll get done.

My apologies for the inconvenience.

Update: Posts fixed back to 25th Sept, 2016 – Yay, over a full year of posts are intact again!

(and quite a few older posts beyond that, though not in any special sequence!)

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